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Homelearning | Community Helpers

I work well with themes. And that applies to my homelearning curriculum. Then again, I don’t really have a curriculum. I facilitate the learning based on the children’s experiences and interests because I do think I’d have a doubly hard time getting information across to them when they have zero knowledge about it. I can introduce of course, but most of the time I see blank faces. However, there are times (not a lot) when they want to know more and that’s when I delve deeper into it.

I’ve been wanting to do the theme on community helpers during the June hols because that’s when we could head out and visit museums, fire stations, etc. Alas, the kids fell ill and such trips were not recommended so we have to wait till July to go through it.

We started off with this box of Educo’s Occupation Project which is available at Liliewoods Social at Katong I12. The kids had to categorise items related to the specific occupation. While it may seem easy to sort them, I find a lot of conversation can be generated as we went through individual item, hence the process took longer than expected. Of course, we need to supply them with the vocabulary for each picture.

We did visit the library to borrow books on the various occupations to complement the lesson. However, it would be really good if we could get hold of books set in the local context. But hey, there’s always the Internet!

In the near future, I would really like to get the girl to write short texts. Let me find the time to do so. 😅

Community Helpers’ 2-piece puzzles. I thought it would be fun to get the toddler to match these puzzles up. Dan did it half-heartedly, as if telling me that I was looking down on him with this task. Hah. I thought it would be good to source for pictures with, well, humans in uniforms for the different occupations. Awesome if it’s in local context. Anyone game to do that and share? 😬

Injecting a bit of fun into learning would be this set of memory matching game. The girl was all enthusiastic about it while the boy was still trying to figure out what we were doing. He’ll get there, one day.

Still on categorising is this Community Helpers Sort and Classify mats. Dan grouped the pictures associated with the occupation. Looks easy to us but it took a bit of effort for him to categorise them. Perhaps , what I should do is to start small, with two to three occupations and asked him to sort as opposed to having him to do all at one go. Again, the kids learnt the vocabulary words here. The girl could sort obviously but the challenge for her is to get her to know and spell all the words. Ok, ok. Maybe not all, but most (of the easier words). The delighted Faith got to use the Xyron sticker maker while the brother used good old glue because we all know the fate of the sticker maker if it landed in the hands of very young kiddos. 😭

His first completed mat. Goodness, it took quite long! I need to remind myself to be patient with him. He’s honing his motor skills after all! And just look the sister. I don’t know what prompted that expression?

That day, we were touching on the postman and I thought we should visit Singapore Post Centre at Paya Lebar. Anyway, I needed to post a parcel. It was a nice place and rather picture-worthy.

I didn’t ask them to pose so hmm, this is the best I could capture. 🙄

My friend suggested that ending the lesson with a field trip to KidZania would be nice, which I agree. Let’s wait till the boy is of the right age to visit then. 😉 Meanwhile, a visit to the fire station, Police Heritage Centre, etc is more feasible.

Just a note.

A few have asked which printer I used after I posted this on IG stories. I’m currently using Canon’s PIXMA TS9170 (on loan for review purposes). I truly love the vibrant colours on the print. It would be especially good for photos.